I Wish I Was Dead
by Amles80
Summary: Edith's thoughts shortly after Lavinia's death. Written for a prompt at LJ. Edith/Lavinia, angst!


_Death, more death, the one I love cannot live, it's the circle of my life…_

The thoughts were spinning in Edith head, endless, heavy, making her dizzy and strangely petrified. She could stand up, and walk, but that was about it. She felt as heavy as stone.

Lavinia had been dead for about three hours. Or maybe five. Or more. Or less. It was hard to tell because she didn't feel the passing of time the way she usually did. There was always the ticking of some big old clock somewhere, the movements of people indicated the time of the day, and the daylight's journey into night…

But she hadn't paid attention to the daylight. She hadn't paid attention to the people who moved so quietly around the house, and she heard no clocks as if she had gone deaf. As if she was the one who was dead.

She stopped her endless pacing and listened. Yes, there was that ticking sound from an adjacent room. It meant she was still among the living although as far as she was concerned she could just as well be dead and gone.

Edith couldn't even cry because she knew that no body would (or could) understand. She would like to throw herself down on the floor and cry herself empty and then dress herself in the blackest of all black mourning clothes, and lock herself up and refuse to see anybody. But she could not.

For what had Lavinia been to her? Cousin Matthew's fiancée, a stranger in the house, a person they all had to be civil to but liking her was never required.

_Death, more death, the one I love cannot live, it's the circle of my life…_

It had happened once before that a person died and she had cried then because Patrick had been her cousin and her flesh and blood. And she had secretly thought that she loved him, that she might have liked to marry him. Still, he had been Mary's fiancé and Edith hadn't had the right to act like she was the one who had been abandoned in life. And now… Always someone else's tears first, someone else's heart…

Except that the situations weren't parallels; she could see it clearly now.

Not until she met Lavinia had she known what it was like to truly love somebody. It had been so strange; Edith was not used to _like_ people just like that and she had never expected to fall in love with a girl; she had never even considered the possibility of it. But Lavinia… Something about that girl had reached her, reached her behind her walls and masks. Lavinia's sweet smile and her gentle voice had quickly turned into the greatest joy of Edith's life. Her voice was like music, the smallest words from her made Edith tremble inside, and if Lavinia's hand sometimes brushed against her, her heart almost stopped…

Edith always knew that her thoughts sounded like some stupid old poetry and it was ridiculous, but she couldn't stop herself from thinking such things. It was the love of songs and poetry, the kind of love she had never understood before. She couldn't stop herself for blushing in the darkness of the night when she imagined what it would be like if Lavinia loved her back. She couldn't stop herself from falling deeper.

They had never spoken about it.

Edith knew enough about life to realise that feelings that went beyond sisterly affection were not to be spoken of. And Lavinia loved Matthew. Every time Edith had been tempted to get closer to Lavinia, to see if she, too, could reach someone else's heart, she had remembered the look on Lavinia's face whenever she looked at Matthew, and Edith had known that she had no choice: If she truly loved Lavinia she couldn't scare her away, for they were to become family, by confessing inappropriate affection.

The worst thing was, perhaps, that cousin Matthew didn't deserve her. Anybody but a fool could see that Mary was the only one for him and Mary loved him back, no matter what she said. But Lavinia, poor, sweet Lavinia, still loved Matthew and she had loved him until the last breath left her body.

Oh, sweet Lavinia did not know that she, too, had been loved like that. That she _was_ loved like that.

What would Lavinia say if she knew? Surely she wouldn't be horrified because she was too understanding for that… But she wouldn't be able to _truly_ understand and appreciate such a love; she would smile gently, shake her head and tell Edith not to be silly; to live and be happy…

Or something like that.

Edith knew that as long as she still remembered Lavinia's face, and she was never going to forget, there would be no happiness for her when she looked at other people. Their faces would be blank and meaningless, their voices bland and colourless, like ghosts.

Or was Edith the ghost? She did not, of course, believe in ghosts, but if she did, she thought it must feel exactly like that: To live on without fully living.

What time was it already? She didn't know, she didn't care. Did she really have to start caring eventually? Did she really have to go on pretending that everything was fine?

"I wish I was the one who had died", she said out loud in the empty room. "I wish I was dead."

Nobody was there to hear her. Nobody replied. Soon she wasn't even sure that she had said it at all.


End file.
